Stephen Cannell - King Con

There were monitors watching the High-roller rooms, along with monitors covering the entire casino, including the drive-up at the entrance out front. Since all of the surveillance was from ceiling cameras, the room was called the Eye-in-the-Sky. There were other technicians in the room who walked around constantly looking at the various monitors. On one wall hung ten or twelve large leather-bound photo albums that had pictures of card sharps. Each leather-bound volume had a spine slip indicating what kind of cheats were pictured inside. Besides dice tats and 7UPs, there were volumes for nail nickers and crimpers (card markers), hand muckers and mit men (card switchers), as well as card counters and shiner players.

"I need to look at the lobby tapes for two o'clock yesterday and nine o'clock this morning," Tommy growled. "I also wanna see the tapes on the pull-ups out front for both those times."

"You can't be in here," S.B. said. He was sweating and he straightened his glasses, which had been knocked askew on his beak nose when Tommy had pushed him.

"Hey, dickhead. I didn't hear you right. I think it sounded like you just said I couldn't be in here. I hope, for your sake, that ain't what you said." Tommy's balls were clanging.

'Tommy I-" But S.B. said no more as Tommy interrupted him.

"I pay rent to this fucking joint for my jewelry store. For what? My store just got clouted. I wanna look at the security tapes now." He moved toward the little man, who took a quick step back and finally nodded his head, which bobbed up and down on his pencil neck like a dashboard doll. S. Bartly Kneeland's balls didn't clang; they chimed like Baccarat.

"Okay, okay. I'll get 'em, Tommy." He turned and moved to the rack of tapes. He pulled the four tapes Tommy had asked for, then slammed the lobby tape for yesterday afternoon into a separate viewing monitor on the far side of the room. Tommy elbowed him out of the way, grabbed the remote, and scanned the tapes, looking for anybody in a cowboy hat. Finally he saw him: A big guy in a fringed jacket and cowboy hat was walking across the lobby with a hooker. The time code read: 2:35 P.M. He hit regular speed and watched. He didn't recognize the cowboy and it was hard to see him under the hat, but there was something familiar about the hooker. He didn't think he'd ever rucked her. He would have remembered, 'cause she was a beauty. Still, he thought he knew her.

"I think I know this cunt with him," Tommy said. "I know this fucking bitch from somewhere." His simian brain struggled to make the connection, and then the cowboy and the hooker walked off frame. Tommy ejected the tape, then slammed in the front entrance tape for yesterday. He rolled it down to a few minutes earlier, and started to fast-forward again until he saw a white Nissan pull up in front of the hotel. The time code read: 2:15 P.M. He saw three people getting out. He couldn't make out the older man because he moved immediately into the hotel. The hat still blocked a good look at the cowboy's face, but now he got a full-face shot of the girl in the miniskirt. He froze the tape; it was the hooker he'd run into coming out of the can yesterday. Then realization dawned…

"Fuck me!" he cried out in amazement.

"You know her?" S.B. said, wishing Tommy would get the hell out of his room.

"It's 'Tricky Vicky' Hart, all dressed up like a hooker. It's the fucking bitch who prosecuted Joey." Tommy took the tape out, grabbed the other ones, and started to leave the room.

"You can't take those," S.B. said. "The shift boss has to sign for all of them every twenty-four hours…"

But Tommy Rina was already gone.

He called his brother Joe from the lobby and told him about the pearl and the tapes and Vicky Hart and the cowboy. His brother greeted this information with dead silence.

"Joe, you hear what I'm fucking saying? This cunt hit us for a hundred large."

"Something else is going on, Tommy," Joe said calmly. He never let his voice reveal his emotions.

"Fuckin' A, this split-tailed D.A. stole a hundred K from us. I told ya this bitch needs to get hit by a speedin' car."

"Tommy, when the facts in evidence don't fit the parameters of common sense, there is usually a piece of the equation missing. It makes no sense for Victoria Hart, a prosecuting attorney, to commit a jewelry hustle at our store. So that means there's something else going on. Unless you misidentified her?"

"Joe, this is her. I been watchin' her on the news since you got busted. Lemme go get this twat and finish her off. This is nuts. We can't let these people piss on us."

"I'm gonna send Texaco down to work with you. In the meantime, check the airplane arrivals and departures for her name. Peter can do that for you. Let's see who Miss Hart is traveling with. Let's find out who this cowboy is before we make a move."

Tommy was frustrated. "What we gotta do, Joe, is get this caravan of camels outta our asshole."

"Don't do anything till I tell you," and Joe hung up.

When Tommy got to his penthouse on the top of the Ignatious Hotel, Calliope was standing there, holding two airline tickets for the Bahamas that had just come special delivery.

"Look what I won!" she trumpeted proudly as he came through the door, scowling. "I wasn't even listening to the dumb station. It was rock 'n' roll and I only listen to country, but I guessed 'Long-stemmed Roses' by Tanya Tucker, and guess what…? They were having a weekend country countdown and I won anyway. Is that lucky?"

Tommy wasn't listening. He was starting to call friends at other hotels in Atlantic City to see if Victoria Hart was registered.

"I won two round-trip tickets to Nassau!" she squealed, hoping he'd get interested by her excitement.

"I can't go down there right now."

"Well, I wanna go," she said petulantly. "They're my tickets and they're only good for two days."

"Look, I'll buy you tickets later, or we'll fly down to Sabre Bay on Joey's jet. Who da fuck cares about free airline tickets? I gotta deal with this thing. My jewelry store got hit. Ya know how that looks? Everybody knows that's my joint. Somebody hits my joint, they gotta catch a bus or I look like a piece a'shit."

"I'm going, with or without you," Calliope said, holding her ground, figuring that she had the advantage because she was a magnificent bed partner. She knew Tommy had never had better tube cleaning in his whole life, and Calliope wanted to go to the Bahamas on these tickets. There was principle involved… She had won them herself and she intended to use them.

The argument lasted an hour. "They do have phones in the Bahamas, y'know," Calliope reasoned savagely.

He finally agreed to go the day after tomorrow, just to shut her up. If he made that flight, it would put him at the Sabre Bay Club on the same day Victoria Hart and Beano Bates had planned to arrive in Nassau.

BEANO FINALLY TOLD VICTORIA HOW THE MAIN CON was supposed to work. They were all on the Delta flight to San Francisco. Roger-the-Dodger had his nose pressed against the screen of a large carrying case that had a sign across it that read CANINE DRUG ENFORCEMENT, u.s. CUSTOMS in large red letters. Beano had told the stewardess he was a government dog trainer and that Roger was being delivered to the Customs Drug Enforcement Team at SFO. This allowed the terrier a privileged position on the floor between their seats, in first class, instead of a freezing ride in the nut-puckering environs of the luggage compartment. As the engines hummed softly and flight attendants took drink orders, Beano explained to a partially awestruck Victoria how a moose pasture con worked. He told her about preparing the field, which included the government painting scam, and about the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company, which was a Bates family-owned business. He explained how the oil company was nothing but a watered-down corporate shell that Paper Collar John had bought for a hundred dollars five years ago for possible future use in a moose pasture. FCP amp;G's most attractive feature was that it ostensibly owned thousands of acres of prime land in north Fentress County, Tennessee. He explained that these deeds of ownership were basically worthless, because they came from old land grants issued a hundred fifty years ago at about the time of Andrew Jackson.